The invention is advantageously applicable to dispensing medicines, in particular in hospitals, in order to make up batches of medicines with the batches corresponding to individual patients, and with the batches of medicines for all of the patients in a single service being made up together in response to a set of prescriptions. The invention is naturally also applicable to dispensing other small articles, in shops, warehouses, workshops, etc., for example pieces of hardware or electronic components, with the articles being made up into individual batches in response to a set of orders made out by a set of customers or by a given production service.
Numerous devices are already known for dispensing goods in response to orders, and in particular for dispensing pharmaceutical products in pharmacies, or in central services for supplying goods to pharmacies.
Prior art devices of this type have been developed, in particular, for storing large quantities of the products, using automated handling and with selected articles being brought together in response to each order. Such devices are controlled by an electronic system from a console or by means of a computer having a terminal and a keyboard, and such systems also provide stock-keeping functions and keep track of items that need re-supplying.
Thus, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3 819 088 describes a device for storing and dispensing objects, with the device comprising a plurality of vertical drawers each constituted by a row of vertical compartments. Each compartment contains a stack of identical objects in the form of boxes or the like. The drawers belong to one or more storage modules. They are individually movable within the corresponding module in translation in a direction perpendicular to the compartments, thereby enabling any one of the compartments in a drawer driven in translation to be positioned over a transporter belt corresponding to the module. Through a suitable compartment bottom, a cleat driven by the belt engages the desired object which is at the bottom of the stack contained in the compartment, thereby extracting the object. The object drops onto the transport belt and is thus driven by this belt or by other belts to a central recovery point, while the drawer is returned to its initial position in its module.
Such prior art systems relate essentially to organizing the storage bay and to the means for automatically extracting each desired object. They process received orders one after the other.
The present invention seeks to provide a different mode of dispensing objects, suitable for operating on articles which are packaged in unit packs or in boxes of several articles, in order to make up individual batches in response to a set of orders, said mode of dispensing objects being independent of the manner in which the objects are taken from storage (i.e. the objects may be taken manually or automatically), thereby enabling the invention to be readily adapted to storage systems which already exist, while providing significant improvement in the services rendered and a considerable gain in productivity.